One local resident estimates there are 2,000 people living in or around the perimeter. There are easily hundreds.

A 10-minute ride to the east is New Kingston, a hub of commerce with high- rise banks, a multimillion-dollar shopping mall, and refurbished hotels where an international clientele of businessmen can breakfast on steak and champagne for $80 (in Jamaican currency), or about the average weekly salary in this island nation.

Somewhere between those two extremes is the real Jamaica, a Third World nation of 2.3 million people living on a debt-ridden island that many thought in 1980 was on the brink of civil war.

It is proud and it is picturesque -- at least away from the cities.

But most of all, it is poor.

To comprehend why anyone would scramble for the brutal and dangerous work of cutting cane in the fields of South Florida -- one-fourth of the cane cutters are injured each year -- one must understand the conditions in their homeland.

``For them,`` says Carl Stone, Jamaican sociologist and pollster, ``getting into that cane thing and earning some U.S. dollars is some major prize . . . In spite of the rigorous and difficult conditions of the work, the cane workers look at it as a great opportunity.``

Three of four households have no indoor plumbing and half are without electricity. In many rural areas, water is still carried from nearby streams or drawn from community pipes snaked along mountain roads. Roads that start (not always soundly) in the city dissolve into rock-strewn ruts in the hills.

To legitimately get ahead in this depressed economy, say many, you have to get out. So each year, nearly 20,000 migrate to the United States alone. And about 10,000 leave temporarily for South Florida to cut sugar cane. Many of the temporary migrants, before the cane harvest, also harvest apples in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and the Northeast.

Unemployment, according to Stone`s surveys, stands by some estimates at about 35 percent, greater than unemployment in the United States during the Great Depression. The official Jamaican unemployment rate is 26 percent.

Among those who have jobs, the average weekly salary is the equivalent of about 16 U.S. dollars. That in an economy where eggs cost about $1.50 U.S. a dozen, electricity (without air conditioning) can run from $30 to $50 U.S., water may cost just under $20 U.S. and schoolbooks for one child can cost more than a month`s salary.

Stone estimates for a family of three or four to live modestly but decently requires an income of $800 Jamaican a month. That, however, ``is way beyond what most people are earning.``

Add to the unemployment the following:

-- Inflation, which in 1985 hovered around 23 percent and finally dropped last year to 14 percent.

-- Austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund, including the 1985 layoff of about 20,000 government workers.

-- Devaluation of the Jamaican dollar from $1.85 for each U.S. dollar in 1983 to about $5.55 today.

The ``fiscal mess,`` says Stone was caused by overborrowing and magnified by the devaluation of Jamaican currency.

STRAINING AND STRAPPED

Taken together, you have a country straining under severe economic and social pressures, with a painfully strapped economy that touches people in the most basic ways.

In September, several schools failed to open because of vandalism, leaky roofs, faulty sanitation equipment, and a lack of desks and chairs.

Paulette Chevannes, who teaches in a ghetto high school in Kingston, says the children will carry their chairs from class to class to make certain they have something to sit on.

``There are schools,`` she says, ``where teachers teach outside under the trees.``

Though education is supposed to be free, books on the high school level and uniforms, bus fare and lunch money make it an expensive proposition for many.

Veronica Phipps, who brings produce from her small mountain farm in Portland to the market in Kingston, said it cost her $100 Jamaican a week for bus fare and lunch to send her twin daughters to high school. She`ll make that much if business is brisk during her three days at the market.

Phipps has seven children and a husband who broke his foot. He hasn`t been able to work in the fields for months. Two weeks after school started, she told her daughters they would have to drop out.

It`s not easy, says Woodie Miller, secretary general for the Jamaican Teachers Union. ``Parents make great sacrifices for their children`s education.``